This is part two of a two-part collaborative post with author Raymond Sigrist. Part one is here. I would first suggest that we very carefully re-read Raymond’s essay. Perhaps you might print it out and keep it some place where you might stumble upon it, perhaps when you are in the grips of confusion or irritation. [...]
From hokey to eternity
June 16, 2010 By 5 Comments
“Love is not restricted by limitations. For love does not have any bounds, being as aspect of the Infinite Love. If one has love for something physical, then this physical thing becomes a vessel for love. But when one has love for the Infinite Being, then her love is clothed in the Infinite. Both the [...]
the willingness to bear duality
March 14, 2010 By 8 Comments
In his book, The Mystic Heart, Wayne Teasdale mentions four aspects of interspirituality: surrender, humility, spiritual practice, and compassionate action. As we surrender more deeply we acknowledge our multi-layered resistances and face our egoic conditioning head on. Humility allows us to recognize and allow fuller access to these layers. I have not surrendered easily. Surrender grows in me though the apprceciation [...]
Relaxing belief-driven agendas
March 3, 2010 By 1 Comment
Often times I think we find ourselves trapped in a cage of our own making. I have forgotten who it was now, but someone on the dusty Dharma trail years ago remarked, after spending 6 months in a Burmese monastery practicing intensive vipassana meditation, that he felt like he had “downloaded an entire religion.” [...]
Horse first, cart later, perhaps. Cloud reflections 5.
October 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Chapter four of the Cloud of Unknowing is a crucial one. In Chapter three we learned the basics of the simple practice of contemplation. We were encouraged to life up our heart in love for God, forget everything else, and feel a naked intent onto God. (By the way, I think I am done with [...]
To love the one thing I cannot think (Cloud reflections 4)
October 15, 2009 By 1 Comment
In chapter 6 the author writes “I know you’ll ask me ‘How do I think on God as God, and who is God?’ ” This is one reason I love this book so much. It’s honest. It’s like a friend chatting over a chamomile tea . I love it becasue he answers his own question [...]
how to save the world–cloud reflections 3
October 5, 2009 By 7 Comments
Huston Smith in his book Why Religion Matters claims we find ourselves in the twenty-first century facing a number of profoundly disturbing crises threatening the global environment and economy; however perhaps at their root, he argues, lies a spiritual crisis. We have written science a blank check, he writes, for science’s claims as [...]
the source wants you–cloud reflections 2
September 24, 2009 By 2 Comments
This week’s email comes in two parts: the first is a brief description of the practice of meditation as taught in The Cloud of Unknowing, and the second is a response to a question I received in an email about this book selection. The meditation technique taught in The Cloud The anonymous fourteenth century [...]
A rainmaking cloud–cloud reflections 1
September 17, 2009 By 3 Comments
In the first line of the introduction to her brilliant new translation of a 14th century classic text of timeless wisdom, Carmen Acevedo Butcher writes “This book you now hold is a rainmaker for anyone whose soul has ever felt dry as a bone.” The text is The Cloud of Unknowing. I have personally found the work [...]
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